Need for Pre-employment Drug Testing

It has become a requirement for conducting drug testing in the workplace. A critical safety issue in the workplace is regarding pre-employment drug testing by human resources and safety professionals. Employee background checks, among which drug abuse tests are one, have gained an importance for many Fortune 500 companies.

It is considered that pre-employment drug testing is very important for an employer. A productive and healthy workforce is developed by these tests. As a result, profit for a company increases. A drug-free work place environment is maintained. Monitoring of drug and alcohol abuse in the work place can be done easily.

Before a person becomes a potential employee, it is necessary for the employer to prevent drug abuse by the worker. A hazard-free environment is provided by conducting pre-employment drug testing. The best way for providing a drug-free workplace is aggressively screening out the drug abusers before employment. Certain federal and state laws have to be followed before conducting pre-employment drug testing. Different state laws have different conditions for performing pre-employment drug testing. Some of these allow drug testing of applicants who are informed in advance about the drug screening in hiring process.

Use of drugs at workplace is prevalent in many places. This results in spoiling millions of hours of productive work and also results in disruption of employee morale in many companies. In order to avoid this problem, care should be taken that drug abusers are not hired.

Certain persons may be tested positive during drug testing process done on current employees. Then the employer may fire the person or terminate from employment. Sometimes rehabilitation and treatment programs are also conducted for the well-being of employees and are taken back into the company. However, pre-employment drug testing prevents the rehabilitation and treatment costs. Hence, it is very much important for a company to conduct pre-employment drug testing.